Development according to Amartya Sen is a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy. It is the process of enhancing individual capacities to avoid various deprivations such as starvation, malnutrition, morbidity, and mortality. But nowadays the definition of development has changed. It has been limited to the GDP and prodigality. Constant destruction of nature has been a norm due to the coming up of many development projects in rural and tribal areas, at the same time all this plays with the interests of the inhabitants of these areas. In essence, when we discuss the term nature or forest, it does not mean only plants and trees rather it includes biodiversity and ecology. Everything is linked to ecology, from little plants and insects to large creatures and humans. Each component of this ecology serves a purpose, and each maintains a natural balance. Human beings are the ones who disrupt this balance, whether for the sake of development or to make indiscriminate profits. In the current Indian context, a lot is happening in this concern and various legislations enacted by the British colonizers have been used to grab the land in resource-rich tribal areas. The Indian Forest Act, 1927, can be seen as one such enactment which is wrongly perceived by many as an important legislation for the conservation of forests. But that is not the case, as it was only enacted to meet commercial and military demands for timber. By recognizing forests as state property, the enactment attempted to overthrow customary rights and forest management systems which gave an open license for timber exploitation.
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